Place: 4274 Chamberlin Hall (refreshments will be served)
Speaker: Russell Gardner, Jr., Freelance scholar
Abstract: This is a follow-up presentation to a CCSS presentation, “Writing a Novel,” in September, 2014. This talk includes lessons learned from that first effort. I call myself a novelist not because I’ve published (yet), but because I have a daily routine of writing (it’s my occupation), have studied the process in readings and courses, and have presented ongoing work to others. The present twelve chapter first draft of a second novel, Different Windows, has been done independently, this time, of any formal class (although I employ a paid editor). Each chapter includes about 25-manuscript pages.
I will focus on
Novel-writing to organize data and its relations to other forms of scientific, and “ordinary,” means of human data-processing,
Fiction as a way to talk publically and formally about matters that worry and interest me, namely,
the climate crisis,
billionaire denial of the crisis, especially highly influential ones who seek to minimize government in all its forms (Jane Mayer’s Dark Money (2016)),
the fate of one’s descendents after one dies,
the treatment form of psychoanalysis which has retreated from the forefront of thinking, but which needs representation in an understandable format, and
some bleak optimism about a dismal seeming future.
Formulations of Professor and Chairman of UW’s Department of English, Caroline Levine, who has written The Serious Pleasure of Suspense (2003).
Process of working out a second draft of Different Windows and envisioned attempts to publish the completed work.